


New Meanings

by flaming_muse



Category: Glee
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-09-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 05:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaming_muse/pseuds/flaming_muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s with a little hesitation that Blaine pushes through the doors of the Lima Bean and breathes in the familiar scents of coffee and baked goods.</p>
<p>episode tag for 4x01 (“The New Rachel”), no spoilers going forward</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Meanings

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Deutsch available: [New Meanings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11904117) by [Klaineship](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klaineship/pseuds/Klaineship)



Blaine has always liked the smell of coffee. He has since he was a child and used to sit on his mother’s knee and color at the kitchen table while she sipped her morning dark roast. It has always made him feel warm and comfortable, a sense of peace and safety rising from a steaming cup in front of him or in his hands. Over the past year and half it’s been even more wonderful for him, because it’s been tied up with a particular pair of sparkling blue-green eyes sitting across the table from him, first as his best friend and then as something much, much better.

Coffee means companionship and understanding. Coffee means talking and laughing, holding hands, sharing confidences, bringing each other treats, and trading kisses later flavored with chocolate, hazelnut, or whipped cream.

To Blaine, in a way, coffee has come to mean love.

The last few months have tainted its smell, though, and it’s with a little hesitation that Blaine pushes through the doors of the Lima Bean and breathes in the familiar scents of coffee and baked goods. His eyes automatically scan the room, and for once when he doesn’t see anyone he knows his shoulders relax. He has no reason to be tense here anymore.

He adjusts his bag across his chest as he steps to the end of the line. Kurt isn’t in the Lima Bean, he thinks with relief. Kurt won’t be here at all anymore, because he’s left the crushing horror of his job and has gone to New York where he belongs.

Kurt has never belonged in Lima, but even more he never belonged in one of the awful Lima Bean aprons. They made him look small, and Kurt never looks small. They made him look weak, and Kurt is never weak. Kurt always stands tall. Kurt always is pushing forward. Kurt never lets life get him down.

Except that after his rejection from NYADA had made his world crumble, after he’d sat in silence on the couch with his head on Blaine’s shoulder for what felt like forever, Kurt had stood up and made a new plan, a smart and safe one, to get him to New York the next year. He would take classes locally, he would save up as much money as he could, and he would be so perfect and practiced in his audition that they couldn’t possibly say no again.

And the scent of coffee gained new meanings for Blaine with Kurt’s job: sadness, resignation.

“What can I get you?” the woman behind the counter asks Blaine, and he pulls out a smile and tells her his order.

His smile fades as he waits while the other barista makes his coffee, and it’s not because he’s going to miss the extra dollop of whipped cream or flavor shot Kurt would give him. It’s because all he can see is the ghost of Kurt standing there, the fading copy of himself that he had become over the summer.

Blaine had only been able to watch it happen. He’d only been able to watch helplessly as Kurt worked hard like he always did, but worked without his usual joy, his spark even at the best of times a faint echo of itself. And at the worst of times, Kurt had to take the abuse of his customers, he had to smile and take it and be reminded again and again that he had failed to escape the people of Ohio. He was forced to face every day at work that he was stuck in Lima and not chasing his dreams with the same fervor he always had before.

It sapped even more of the life from Kurt as Blaine looked on and wished he could stop it.

It made Blaine hate the Lima Bean. It made Blaine hate the smell of coffee, because it became the symbol of everything that his boyfriend isn’t supposed to be. It’s the last thing he wants for Kurt, for him to fade when everything that is Kurt is due to his strength and vibrance.

And so he did his part to encourage Kurt to be his true self once more, no matter that it meant they’d be apart, no matter that it would hurt Blaine more than he had words to describe it, because there was no point in being together if Kurt was going to be lost in the process.

Blaine takes his drink and turns away from the counter. He doesn’t have to a pick a seat with a good view of the register so that he can smile his support across the room to his boyfriend and pretend his own heart isn’t breaking for him. So he goes over to a grouping of chairs in the corner and sets his bag down as he sits with a sigh.

The door to the Lima Bean opens, and Tina and Artie come through. Blaine lifts his hand in a wave as they spot him, and their answering smiles are enough to loosen some of the tightness in his heart. At least he isn’t alone.

Unlike Kurt, he has a place here. He belongs here. He can be okay here - in Lima, as the lead of New Directions - until it’s his time to leave. He can be okay.

“Hey,” Tina says, coming over. “Sorry, we got caught in traffic. Have you been waiting long?”

Blaine shakes his head. “I just got here a few minutes ago.”

“Any news from Kurt?” Artie asks.

“He landed about an hour ago,” Blaine replies. His hand itches to slip into his pocket like he can touch the text through the dark screen, but he doesn’t let himself. “He says he’s going to drop off his bags and go find Rachel.”

“That’s great,” Tina says with a sympathetic smile. “Say hi from us when you talk to him.”

“I will,” Blaine promises, though he doesn’t really know when Kurt will have time to do more than text until he gets settled. He can send their greetings that way, anyway.

“But first I need some coffee, stat,” Artie says, wheeling his chair back a few inches. “My history class is in serious danger of giving me narcolepsy.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Blaine says with a little laugh.

“Trust me,” Artie tells him. “It’s only the first week, and I already caught myself heading for a full-on drooling snore.”

“Come on, Artie Van Winkle,” Tina says. She reaches out for the handles of his wheelchair. “We’ll be right back, Blaine.”

“I’ll be here.” Blaine watches them go over to the line, smiling at the teasing way Tina is talking to Artie and comforted by the familiar sight, before he reaches for his own cup. He’s going to be okay. Kurt’s in New York, and Blaine will be okay here.

But then he removes the lid from his coffee, and he sees the heart that Jenny drew in the foam.

Kurt did that for him when he made his drinks, a special bit of love in his coffee.

The ground drops out from beneath Blaine’s feet, leaving him dizzy and achingly alone, and his chest feels tight as he looks away from the cup to try to stop the freefall. He’s so glad that Kurt’s in New York, happy beyond words that Kurt is reaching for the sky the way he should instead of being trapped where he doesn’t belong, but of course it’s not without a heavy dose of sadness, too, because that means that Kurt isn’t here with him.

Kurt’s not behind the counter, biting his tongue to keep from snapping back at condescending cheerleaders in a way he never has had to before, but he’s also not sitting across from Blaine in a gorgeous outfit telling him about his day. He’s not going to walk through the door in a minute to join him or save him a seat in the choir room tomorrow. He’s not going to pull up at Blaine’s house in his car and kiss him across the console as soon as Blaine closes the door. He’s not going to hold his hand in the movie theater or overload him with bags when they go shopping. He’s not going to be there at all.

Blaine takes a shaky breath. This is what he wants for Kurt. New York is what he wants for Kurt. But it still hurts. It hurts to know that he’s going not going to see him not just today but almost every day for, god, nearly a year. They won’t be living in the same place for a year, and he takes another breath before he can think about it too much. He can’t think about it like that.

He wants this for Kurt. Just because it hurts that they’ll be apart doesn’t mean it’s not the best thing for Kurt. And maybe it will be good for him, too.

He can stand on his own two feet. He can find his place at McKinley outside of Kurt’s orbit. He can have this year in New Directions and never have to worry about stepping on Kurt’s toes.

But, he thinks as he nods when another customer comes over and asks if she can take the extra chair in their grouping, the one that’s free because there’s no Kurt to sit there, coffee is still never going to smell quite the same.

Because coffee used to mean love. It used to mean the two of them talking and studying and just being together. It used to mean he wasn’t ever really alone, because he had Kurt.

And now sitting in the Lima Bean having a cup of coffee just means that he can’t be with the person he loves the most.

He doesn’t want Kurt there, not if it will destroy him, but Blaine’s not sure he’ll ever be able to walk through the doors and smell the scents of coffee and biscotti and not think of what he can’t have.

At least not right now.

**Author's Note:**

> I am spoiler-free. Please don't say anything to spoil me for upcoming episodes! Thank you! :)


End file.
